October 11, 2018

Global Warming

Sometimes, each side chooses to cover entirely different subjects. Today, we decided to focus on two issues that are being widely covered on one side but less so on the other. While there won’t be a “flip side" to the arguments being made below, we think alerting our readers to the topics themselves is part of bursting media bubbles. We welcome your feedback!

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a special report on the impact of global warming... This new study says that going past 1.5C is dicing with the planet's liveability. And the 1.5C temperature ‘guard rail’ could be exceeded in just 12 years... Keeping to the preferred target of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will mean ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’."

From the Right

“[The report] finds that the world has already warmed by... 1 degree Celsius since humans began sending industrial pollution into the atmosphere. The costs of this warmth can be seen around the world: This decade alone, sweltering heat waves have killed thousands; engorged floods have ravaged cities from Houston to North Carolina; and half of the coral in the Great Barrier Reef has died. The question is what happens next."

The Atlantic

If we are able to successfully reduce emissions, “hundreds of millions of people would be spared extended periods of extreme heat, water scarcity, drought and flooding. Crop yields would not fall as drastically. Coral reefs would have a chance of survival. Countless species would be spared extinction."

Bloomberg

Worth noting: “It is not the direct effects of climate change alone but their indirect effects on the political and economic structures of the world that make it a genuinely existential threat... Among the tipping points that we cannot foresee in any detail is the prospect of historically unprecedented refugee migrations as whole populations who have no choice but to starve or move set out for land where they can live."

“Unfortunately, no alarm seems loud enough to penetrate the walls of the White House... Perhaps the most important thing the public can do right now is seek out and support candidates who take this threat seriously. Also ballot measures: In Washington State, Gov. Jay Inslee is asking voters to approve a carbon tax. It would be the first of its kind, in any state, and could serve as an inspiration for others."